FROM THE ARCHIVEThursday, October 8, 2026
zeugma
ZOOG-muh/ˈzuːɡmə//noun
01 / MEANING
A figure of speech in which one word is made to serve two others in different senses.
Some rhetoricians distinguish zeugma from syllepsis; others use the terms together.
In a sentence.
- 01
‘She lost her keys and her patience’ is a playful zeugma.
- 02
The writer used zeugma to make a single verb do two jobs at once.
Where it came from.
Zeugma comes from ancient Greek ζεῦγμα, a ‘yoking’ or bond. In a sentence, one word yokes two ideas together.
Explore the sourceWhy it’s interesting.
It names a compact turn of phrase that can be witty because one verb carries two meanings.